From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a literary masterclass on how to become both a better writer and reader, on what makes great stories work, and what they can tell us about how to live
George Saunders is the author of nine books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the Premio Rezzori prize, which was also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize. He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. georgesaundersbooks.com
A wonderful book … This book is a delight … I love the warmth with
which he writes about this teaching, and agree wholeheartedly … All
this makes Saunders’s book very different from just another “how
to” creative writing manual, or just another critical essay … One
of the pleasures of this book is feeling his own thinking move
backwards and forwards, between the writer dissecting practice and
the reader entering in through the spell of the words, to dwell
inside the story
*Guardian*
Saunders is such a wise and amiable teacher ... A page-turner
*Robert Webb*
Luminously perceptive
*Guardian*
A masterclass in how to be human ... unfailingly, often thrillingly
illuminating … Published any time, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
would be a joyous reminder that fiction is “the most effective mode
of mind-to-mind communication ever devised”. Published now, it
feels like vital and civilising corrective to the pretend
certainties of public life – and, increasingly, of our personal
lives too
*Telegraph*
One of the most accurate and beautiful depictions of what it is
like to be inside the mind of a writer that I’ve ever read
*New York Times*
The Russian greats truly shine in this account; but Saunders is the
real star. His way of expressing himself is simultaneously
supremely intellectual and jovially down-to-earth. It’s rare to
read a book and love it so much that you think it’s simply perfect.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is that book
*Spectator*
Joins a long tradition of using Russian literature as a guide to
life … Practical and playful … it also probes exactly how narrative
techniques make us more alert, attentive and sympathetic in reading
books and the world around us
*i news*
By the end Saunders is wondering if there is indeed any point in
writing at all. I won’t spoil his conclusion. Suffice to say, the
hairs on the back of my neck were alert
*The Times*
Suffused with wry humour … Not an academic interpretation, but a
reader’s companion. I was pleasurably absorbed from start to
finish
*Evening Standard*
The Booker-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo considers the art
of fiction through seven classic Russian short stories by Chekhov,
Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol
*Guardian, 2021 in Books*
The combination of Saunders’s piercing mind and the Russian
subjects being Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and
Nikolai Gogol promises to be a highbrow treat for fans of
literature, and a book offering deep insights into storytelling and
how narrative functions
*Independent, The books to look out for in 2021*
A literary masterclass
*Evening Standard, A look ahead to the best new books in 2021*
But the real star of A Swim isn't Chekhov or Turgenev or Tolstoy or
Gogol - it's Saunders himself ... This book will quite simply make
you a better, more observant and more understanding reader
*Big Issue*
Part intro to Russian literature, part musings on craft, A Swim in
a Pond in the Rain is all pleasure
*Financial Times*
A worship song to writers and readers
*O, The Oprah Magazine*
His warmth, enthusiasm and homespun metaphors – all part of that
“writerly charm” – banish any sense of the chilly, mechanistic
Fiction Lab ... Gleefully overshoots its brief as a technical
manual or how-to guide … A Swim in a Pond in the Rain generates
more fun, more wit, more sympathetic sense, than we have any right
to hope for from a 400-page critical study
*Arts Desk*
There should be more books like this
*Prospect Podcast*
A masterclass from a warm and engagingly enthusiastic companion
*Guardian, 50 hottest new books everyone should read*
A masterclass in short fiction by one of the finest teachers alive…
It is a joyously civilised primer on how to write – and live –
better
*Daily Telegraph*
Warm, playful and acutely perceptive
*New Statesman, Books of the Year*
Not just astute, humane lit crit but an inspirational manifesto for
the art of fiction
*Spectator, Books of the Year*
A masterclass in writing … a real treat
*Spectator, Books of the Year*
[I] loved George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain … Genial,
generous and illuminating ... He is a great teacher as well as a
great practitioner, and makes you see more
*Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year 2021*
A tin of caviar sort of a book … Saunders guides, prods, nudges,
urges you to disagree … It will stay with you and transform how you
read story by story, sentence by sentence
*Sunday Times, 24 best fiction books 2021*
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